Pros:

Cons:

After years of waiting, the first "true 3D Pokémon RPG" is finally here, and... well, it's pretty good, but not quite what you might've been hoping for. Is Nintendo® intentionally leading us on? Is it worried that all of us Pokémon addicts will leave for good if we are ever fully satisfied by the perfect Pokémon game?

The desert Orre Region is home to the up-and-coming Team Snagem, a burly group thieves that has developed a way to steal Pokémon from their trainers. Once a member of this Shadowy gang, our hero turns on his former compatriots and steals their latest invention, the Snag Machine and discovers a more sinister plot within Team Snagem - taking a page from Square's Kingdom Hearts, they're artificially "closing the doors to their hearts" to make them more powerful.

With the aid of a psychic girl who can see the black aura of these afflicted Pokémon, our extreme, trenchcoat-clad hero sets out to steal all of these Shadow Pokémon, purify their hearts and stop Team Snagem's evil plan. Mushy heart-unlocking nonsense aside, this is Pokémon game with more of an edge than usual, which is a nice and unexpected step for the series, even if it's mostly visual.

Flame on.

You've gotta love the Pokémon take on relationship building: Shadow Pokémon gradually "open their hearts" the more you battle with them, which in turn unlocks new moves for you to battle with. Until completely purified, Shadow Pokémon don't gain experience points and have access to a Colosseum-exclusive move, Shadow Rush. The Shadow Rush attack is not only pretty powerful, it doesn't require knowledge of the series' 17-way Rock/Paper/Scissor system to use effectively, making it a nice mechanism to ramp-up the difficulty and train the (largely theoretical) newcomers on the series' basics.

Once the player is able to purify his Pokémon, he'll need to do so promptly in order to start leveling his party up for the challenges ahead. The game is entirely focused on snagging and purifying Pokémon, and while I usually am one to advocate focus of design, one can't help but feel this isn't quite a "real" Pokémon game: in place of an overworld is a map, removing the series' emphasis on exploration and the accompanying random Pokémon encounters.